World will need to confront Iran, PM says

“The State of Israel
will not allow the world to avoid a confrontation with a country calling for the destruction of Israel,” Prime Minister Ehud
Olmert said Sunday during the weekly cabinet meeting.

“We won’t let the world forget again, through indifference and silence, the threat to the Jewish people,” he said.

Cabinet meeting (Photo: Dudi Vaaknin)

An exhibition of anti-Semitic caricatures was held at Olmert's office in Jerusalem before the meeting. The prime minister said that the exhibition represented the growing anti-Semitic sentiment in different countries around the world.

“Anti-Semintism is the gentiles’ problem, not the Jews’, it is the gentiles’ disease, not ours. As long as there is anti-Semitism in the world, the world will be sick,” Vice Premier Shimon Peres said. Olmert and his ministers urged the world to "strongly fight the worsening anti-Semitic phenomenon."

World aware of danger? (Photo: Dudi Vaaknin)

Yad Vashem Chairman Avner Shalev also attended the exhibition, and said the recent Holocaust denial conference in Iran
prompted international communities to work against the phenomenon.

Reorganizing government

The government will be asked on Sunday to approve the appointment
of Labor Knesset Member Raleb Majadele as minister, Israel's first Muslim cabinet member.

Majadele will first be appointed as a minister without a portfolio and is expected to later receive control of either the Welfare Ministry or the Ministry of Science, Technology and Sports after Olmert completes an anticipated reshuffling of the government over the course of the next few weeks.

Officials close to the PM stressed Saturday that Olmert is not planning to dismiss Defense Minister Amir Peretz from his post, despite widespread rumors suggesting the contrary.

Peretz himself has made it clear that he will refuse to give up the Defense Ministry on his own accord.